


expecto patronum

by lemon_verbena



Series: duo | the auror au [2]
Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Auror Partners, Competent Robin Ellacott, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injured Cormoran Strike, Patronus Charm (Harry Potter), St Mungo's Hospital
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:53:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24014755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemon_verbena/pseuds/lemon_verbena
Summary: Robin’s smart; she’ll have noticed, she’ll have stayed alert, she’ll have avoided obvious fucking traps like this one,Merlin fuckhis leg hurts—“There you are,” Robin’s voice cuts through the fog, and the ghostlight of his patronus settles beside him once more, a protector. “Oh lord, look at you—”
Relationships: Robin Ellacott & Cormoran Strike
Series: duo | the auror au [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1730521
Comments: 14
Kudos: 47





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I fully intended "vulnera sanentur" to be a one-shot when I wrote it, and then the world went to pieces and my brain decided what I needed more than anything was more Auror-flavored goodness. I've made a series, and if I do end up writing anything else in this universe I'll add it there, so subscribe to that if you'd like.
> 
> I feel absolutely zero shame for the cliche title. There's a second part to this that should be up soon.
> 
> I hope you enjoy.

Strike is collapsed on the ground, gasping for air; only the need for oxygen keeps him from making noises of pain. The trap he had stepped in was set up to incapacitate its victim’s feet, but because he wears a prosthesis, it only took control over his remaining leg. He was therefore able to take a single step further than he should have, and the wrenching fall he had taken with one leg stuck landed him in a twisted position that is excruciating for both of his legs. 

He’s only barely able to think enough to pull out his wand; he’s near paralyzed with fear and pain. Strike lays there, lungs pumping like bellows, waiting for it all to recede. He can survive physical pain. He always has before. 

He needs to warn Robin— it is this thought that he focuses on, that gives him purpose— Robin is his junior, and he has a duty to keep her safe. 

Strike cannot summon a single incantation, the pain and fear swamping his mind. He shifts, a bolt of pain shooting straight from his twisted-under leg to the top of his head, and the lightning-flash of it clears his mind enough to realize: the fear must be part of the trap. He shifts again, on purpose, letting the pain give him something else to focus on. Let the healers scold him later. He needs to warn Robin.

He closes his eyes and grits his teeth, hunting for a memory good enough to summon what he must, to warn Robin without giving his position away. He is eminently vulnerable, at the present moment.

Strike has always relied on memories of Charlotte for this, but those are tainted, now. He reaches back, further— passing his Auror exams— graduating Hogwarts— dancing at the Yule Ball with a laughing Ilsa— he grasps this last, and chokes out the incantation.

“Expecto—”

It’s not enough. He screws up his face, wrenches his leg, and reaches back, and back, and back— 

The _thwack_ of his bat connecting with a bludger, sending it towards Jago Ross, keeping the Slytherin from grabbing the snitch, the move that would have cost them the Cup, the way his teammates had hoisted him aloft after the game, chanting his name, the joy, the fellowship—

“Expecto patronum,” he gasps, and it manifests for him, the familiar sleek shape of his crow. It’s thin and wispy but it’s _there_ and in the dim light his patronus casts the fear recedes. His crow nestles next to his face, helping his head stay clear for long enough that he’s able to tell it what to do. It wings off, leaving him on the cold ground, the agony of his leg keeping the panic at bay.

Robin’s smart; she’ll have noticed, she’ll have stayed alert, she’ll have avoided obvious fucking traps like this one, _Merlin fuck_ his leg hurts—

“There you are,” Robin’s voice cuts through the fog, and the ghostlight of his patronus settles beside him once more, a protector. “Oh lord, look at you—”

“I’ll recover,” he grits out, unable to keep the relief out of his voice. “Help me—”

But before he can give her any instructions, Robin has her wand pointed at his legs, and her voice is murmuring incantations he half-remembers. His eyes track the tip of her wand as her healing charms glow and blanket his legs, and the sudden cessation of pain is as heady as any narcotic. 

“Neatly done, Ellacott,” he praises her, knowing it’s what she needs to hear. She’s already studying the trap, lips moving soundlessly as she sorts through the spellwork that built it. Her worry is written clearly across her scarred face; this is no place to be stuck with her injured senior partner even in daylight, and the twilight is creeping in. 

“Alright,” she pronounces, after what must be mere minutes despite feeling like hours. “I think I’ve figured it out. But—” she bites her lip, a nervous habit he knows she’s trying to break. He’ll never admit how charming he finds it. “—well, cross your fingers.”

Robin’s wandwork is, as ever, precise and exacting; she’s graceful, sure, but not showy. She moves only so much as she needs and no more. It’s quick, in the end, as she finishes with a bitten-off _“Finite incantatem”_ and a snap of her wand; the trap dissolves, leaving him still crumpled on the ground, but no longer trapped in his position.

Her spellwork is so precise that his patronus is still perched beside him; its light is becoming clearer, and Strike’s not sure if that’s because he’s feeding it more energy or if it’s just the growing gloom.

“Fuck,” Strike says, the muggle curse slipping easily off his tongue. Robin smiles wearily, looking as relieved as he feels as he rolls himself onto his back and stares at the sky. His hip and knee are absolutely bollocksed, he knows; he’ll either have to bear St Mungo’s, or brave Ilsa’s sharp tongue if he takes his chances with the Herberts. 

“We need to get you out of here,” Robin says after a long moment has passed. It’s getting true dark now, and there are things that lurk in England’s forests he’d prefer not to meet. 

“You too,” he parries, and waits with ill grace for Robin to push to her feet so she can offer him a hand. He’s too sore and stiff to chance getting up without aid. “We both need to get out of here.”

“I know we need to keep from drawing attention,” Robin says as she hauls him upright, politely ignoring the way he bites back a curse and staggers as he tries putting weight on his stump. “But I think Apparating might be the way to go.”

Strike sighs, sharp and aggrieved. “You’re right,” he allows. “Too much of a risk trying to walk out of here. I should’ve planned this better.”

“You had no way to know it’d be this well-trapped,” Robin points out as she steadies him. “The report made it sound like a relatively simple problem, not... well, this.”

_This_ meaning, of course, a stretch of woodlands that had been booby-trapped and cursed to the point of earning a reputation for being haunted in the Muggle villages for ten kilometers around. The report had suggested its reputation was the work of an escaped Dementor, or perhaps a few feral ghosts, but this was far more purposeful. Someone, or multiple someones, had done this with malicious intent, and he and Robin had been lured here. 

Strike’s surprised to find that he’s most angry, not with the threat to the Muggles who might venture in, but with the threat to Robin. She is under _his_ protection, _his_ guidance, and he might’ve gotten her killed. 

“Apparition,” he says, instead of any of that. “Only I’m not…”

_Not sure I can focus well enough to aim myself without splinching,_ he does not say. But Robin knows him well enough by now that he doesn’t have to.

“I can side-along you back,” Robin says confidently enough. “Only you might want to dismiss your patronus before we go.”

He’s forgotten that his crow is still corporeal; Strike reaches up to give its neck-ruff a scratch. The wispy fog-like texture is familiar beneath his fingers, and turns its head into his hand as he bids it leave. It fades away with a silent caw, leaving the pair in darkness. 

“Deep breath,” Robin instructs him, and Strike does as she says, and before he can exhale she Apparates them both with a resounding _crack,_ the sick, mind-bending lurch of it somehow unfamiliar when he is a passenger.

He stumbles, and Robin guides him down into an arm-chair. Strike realizes that she’s brought them, not to the office, or even St. Mungo’s, but to what appears to be her flat. It’s small and a bit cluttered, but it’s nice, or at least the bit of it he can see is nice. He’s facing a fireplace, and lined across the mantle are framed photos, groups of smiling round-faced Ellacotts laughing out at the world. 

“Sorry,” Robin says. “I thought- this seemed easier than trying to go someplace less familiar.”

“It’s fine,” Strike says, trying to bend back his knee and finding that it’s not cooperating. He leans back into the chair with a huff. “Only I think you might need to Apparate me back out of here, because standing may not be in my repertoire at the moment.”

“Oh bollocks,” Robin says, and disappears through the door behind him; Strike thinks it might be to the kitchen. There’s a clatter, and she reappears, a corked bottle in hand. “Healing potion,” she says, “it’s not going to fix you up bright and new, but it’ll probably get you back on your feet.”

Strike’s taken any number of healing potions in his days, and knows better than to hesitate, because they tend to taste nasty. He uncorks and throws back the contents, which indeed have a somewhat slimy texture, but leave a trail of warmth along his throat. Robin takes back the empty bottle and offers him a cup of fruit juice, which Strike throws back similarly to clear the taste from his tongue.

“That’s handy,” he says, gasping as the potion starts to work on him. “You usually keep those on hand?”

Robin nods, taking the glass back and disappearing into the kitchen once more. “My brother is studying to be a Mediwizard,” she calls to him. “He’s constantly brewing up vats of healing potions, all sorts, so I help take them off his hands. I can usually use up or pass along most of it before he sends more.”

“A good man to know,” Strike replies. He flexes his leg; it’s still in pain, but he’s starting to get some motion back, the stiffness receding, so the potion is clearly working. He gestures to the photos. “Which one is he?”

Robin returns with two glasses of water. She takes down a frame and hands it to him, with the water. “There’s all of us together, I think it’s from Jonathan’s Hogwarts graduation. It was a while ago,” she says. “The big one is Jonathan, he’s the eldest. He’s engaged to be married now. Then me, of course,” and here she pauses.

The girl in the photo lacks Robin’s characteristic tight-twisted braids; her hair flows loose and golden-red around her unscarred face. She’s laughing. She looks very young. The older boy next to her has his arm around her shoulders as he jabs her side with a finger, and she sticks her tongue out at him.

Robin clears her throat. “Then Martin, he’s next youngest after me, he lives at home with Mum and Da right now. And the youngest is Stephen, he’s the future Mediwiz.”

In the photo, Martin is attempting to give Stephen a noogie. They are children, wild and free within the confines of this photograph, this captured moment.

Strike feels suddenly as though he’s intruding. “Thanks for the potion,” he says. “Much obliged. Mind if I take your Floo back to the office?”

“Oh no, you can’t possibly,” Robin says, setting the frame back on the mantle.

“What, you’re not hooked up?” Strike asks, surprised. 

“No, I mean you can’t possibly be going back to the office, you need to get checked out at St. Mungo’s,” Robin says, her voice firm. He forgets, sometimes, that she’s seen as much of war as he has, until she talks to him like that. “I’ll go with you, make sure you’re alright, and if they want to keep you, _I’ll_ nip back to the office, let them know what’s happened, and bring you back the paperwork. Honestly, don’t be daft.”

She’s rolling her eyes at him as she lights the fire with a deft flick of her wand, and Strike thinks again how impossible having a junior partner would be, if that partner weren’t Robin. 

“You first,” she says, offering him the jar of Floo powder.

“A gentleman always lets the lady precede him,” Strike says in an affected manner, hoping Robin will leave before him so he won’t have to stagger and limp in front of her. It’s one thing to do it under duress, but another entirely to show such weakness here, in her little living room.

“Mm,” she says. “And yet, you’ll find I don’t trust you not to choose a different destination once I’ve left. So. Up you come.”

She offers him a hand, which he takes with an ill-concealed grimace, and hauls him upright. His knee makes an audible noise, and Strike staggers; Robin moves quickly to catch him, ducking under his arm as his free hand comes up to grab her shoulder. 

“Better go together,” she says, and Strike can feel gratitude for her calm reaction, lurking somewhere on the other side of the pain. She throws a handful of Floo powder into the fire, calls out “St. Mungo’s!” in her clear voice, and pulls him into the green flames.


	2. Chapter 2

Strike’s laid up on the bed on the fourth floor, waiting for the itching to fade. The Healers had been brisk and efficient, and Robin had handed him off without complaint. 

Laying with his eyes closed, Strike turns over the memory of their arrival in his mind; the way the Welcome Witch had startled at Robin’s face, had assumed they were there for _her_ and not him. The way Robin hadn’t been surprised by this, or— anything, really. She’d hardly reacted at all. 

He’s trying to focus on this to distract from the various sensations that the healing produces, not enjoying the way he can feel his abused body knitting back together once again. 

One of the Healers, a dark-skinned woman who managed to look nice in the lime-green robes of her profession, had tsked at him. Didn’t he know that eventually his body would build a resistance to being healed? Was he aware that he was rapidly approaching that point?

 _I’m very, very aware,_ he thinks, staring at the ceiling. There’s an expiry date on his ability to do field work, and if he doesn’t stop getting himself into trouble like this, he’s going to meet it sooner rather than later.

A knock on his door; Strike is grateful, no matter who it might be. Anything to take his mind off of the subject he can’t seem to stop dwelling on.

“Come in,” he calls. 

“Hello again,” Robin says, coming through the doors with a leather folio under one arm and a bag of muggle takeaway in her other hand. “Sorry if you were hoping for someone new.”

He smiles at her, propping himself up on one elbow to look his partner in the eye. “No face I’d rather see right now,” he says, surprising himself to realize that he’s not really lying. “Especially seeing as you come bearing real fuckin’ food.”

Robin laughs quietly. She always laughs quietly, he thinks, watching her set the takeaway bag on the tiny table that’s probably meant to hold healing implements. She’s not a loud woman. He wonders when she learned to be so quiet.

“I also bring you paperwork, so don’t go thinking this is entirely altruistic,” Robin says, holding out the folio. “I’ve filled out the basic information, so at least I’ve saved you the boring details. You can focus on the interesting details, instead.”

“See, Robin,” Strikes says, hauling himself upright against the head of the bed and settling against the pillow. “That’s what I like about you. You don’t beat around the bush, and— did you get the spicy dumplings?”

She nods, setting the styrofoam container on his bedside table. “Of course I did,” Robin says, making a face at him. “What kind of junior would I be if I forgot the spicy dumplings?”

Strike ignores the folio on the blanket in favor of wolfing down the dumplings, followed by half the container of Hunan Delight, eating in companionable silence with Robin. She works methodically through a container of pork lo mein, and it’s something, Strike thinks as he crunches through a snow pea, to be able to sit together and not speak. He can’t think of the last partner he was assigned that he was able to do this with, except Hardacre, and that partnership was born of a deep trust and reliance.

Reflecting on the day, though, Strike thinks… perhaps this partnership is built on similar foundations. He can’t think of who else knows the shape of his patronus, who else he has spoken to through its sharp beak. Not in years, he thinks, has he done that particular version of that particular charm. It was odd that it didn’t feel odder that he had done so with Robin. 

It’s a very private thing, one’s patronus, in some ways. A reflection of one’s innermost self. The shape one takes to light the way through the dark. He wonders, looking over at her quiet form, what shape Robin’s takes. He’s very sure, just then, that she can produce a corporeal patronus, despite them never having discussed it. It’s not required of Aurors— only the basic patronus is necessary to pass the exam— but he knows somehow that if he asked her to, Robin would pull out her wand and produce a corporeal patronus right here in St. Mungo’s.

Strike’s seized with a perverse urge to do so— an exchange of sorts. He wants to know this about his quiet junior partner. By silent agreement, they share very little personal information. It suddenly seems wrong, that she should know his patronus, and he doesn’t know hers. 

“Alright,” Robin says, setting aside her lo mein to pick up the folio. “Let’s get this paperwork sorted out, and I’ll get out of your hair and let you get some rest. Assuming they’re keeping you until morning?”

“Considering it’s gone eleven, I should hope so,” Strike says with a crooked smile, banishing his thoughts as so much nonsense. “I should hope St. Mungo’s knows it’s rude to kick people out of bed after midnight.”

Robin snorts at that, laying out the papers on the bed. He can see where she’s filled them out in her careful penmanship. She’s one of the few Aurors he knows who also prefers muggle writing implements; he likes that about her.

He likes a lot of things about his junior, Strike reflects as Robin hands him her writeup of their incident. Really, he hadn’t expected to like her at all, much less this much. He doesn’t know her well, but he _likes_ her. Maybe that’s why he wants to know her better, so he can understand why he likes her the way he does.

“Read that over, I’ll make any changes you think are needed, and I can write up your side for you if you’d like,” she says, interrupting his train of thought. “Probably faster to dictate, what with your wrist and all.”

He makes a face at her. “Bloody body’s falling apart around me,” he grouses jokingly, and she exhales a laugh. “Didn’t even feel it hurting until I got here.”

He’d landed on his wrist when he fell, and it was one of the things his Healer had tsked him over. 

“Let’s start at the top,” Robin prompts him, and he skims her writeup and starts reciting his recollection of the afternoon. Robin pours him a glass of water from the pitcher as he talks.

“I don’t deserve you,” he says when she hands him the cool glass. 

Robin’s eyebrows go up, pulling at the stark scarring on her face oddly. 

“That’s a kind thing to say,” she replies, pen still poised over the parchment. “Thank you.”

“No, thank you,” he says, suddenly gripped with the urge to articulate his realization that Robin was better suited to him than he’d ever expected any junior partner to be. “I— you— you’re very clever, and I appreciate— that is, you’re—”

Robin smiles at him, softly. “I think you might be needing some rest now, Strike,” she says, gathering up the sheaf of paperwork. “I’ll finish up what I can, and come back in the morning, alright?”

Strike, frustrated by his inability to articulate himself, realizes then that he is bone-achingly tired. Being healed, as he’s been told numerous times, takes energy from the body and speeds it towards its natural conclusions. Of course he’s tired. 

“Alright,” he agrees, and slowly he slides down the bed as Robin tidies away the containers from their meal and sends them back to her flat. She’ll probably send them to be recycled in the muggle fashion, rather than just Vanishing them, he thinks, eyes slipping shut against his will. 

The last thing Strike remembers of the day is Robin’s face, the pale skin and bright scar, as she looks at him, then turns off the light in his little room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really started this fic by thinking about what each of their Patronus forms would be, and under what circumstances they would reveal them; this is the end of this particular ficlet, but I do hope to write one that lets Strike see Robin's Patronus. (No, it's not a robin, what sort of writer do you take me for?)
> 
> Thank you for the lovely reception these works have received. It means so much that you all not only enjoy them but take the time to leave kudos and comments, especially in these hard times. I hope to be able to share more fic with you soon; until then, [find me on tumblr](https://lemon-verbena-writes.tumblr.com/) for updates and to chat, and be well, everyone.


End file.
